Menu

high risk pregnancy

To say it’s been a busy couple months would be an understatement. Before February started I was looking at 6 doctors appointments, 2 doula interviews, 1 hospital tour, Ryan’s normal school activities/party extras, not knowing where the next pcs would take us, having to find a back up sitter for labor/baby time. Then add in last minute visitors from my husbands side of the family, couple snow days off of school, sick days off of school and it was beyond overwhelming.

Then some things started to fall into place: we found out we found we would be moving to Hawaii, not our first choice but not a bad consolation prize. With that brought a new set of to-do’s. With dogs there’s a whole process of getting them vaccinated, blood tested etc that must start asap so that they won’t have to be quarantined when we arrive… So vet appointment added to our February. I found a back up sitter. Some fun to the end of February: family pics (I had wanted to do them and actually had them scheduled when Ry came early) and a prenatal massage.

Lyme stuff

It’s been mostly ups and downs with a majority on the upside. I did have decent flare on my birthday. After a couple days with early rising house guests and a nocturnal womb gymnast I woke up on my birthday with a killer headache, fatigue and hot flashes/fevery. Number one cause of flares for me: stress number two lack of sleep (minimum needed to feel functional about 7 hours). I think I got 9 total all weekend. My lyme doc appt was canceled due to a decent snowstorm in which all of northern Virginia was advised to stay off the road.

See so much snow! My appointment was rescheduled but I did get my blood work back that I tested positive for EBV and Mycoplasma. Numbers weren’t super high but enough that indicates a chronic exposure. Another piece of the lyme puzzle on my way to healing.

I see my lyme doc on Monday and am eager to see her for a variety of reasons but especially since yesterday I got a new tick bite! Smack dab on my pregnant belly! WTF man. We spent a total of one hour playing oustside, half hour in the back yard and half on our deck. I had on a form fitting maternity top, dress and long leggings and sneakers and bug spray on our bottom halfs. I put the AC during nap and settled down for a detox bath and there it was on the lower half of my belly (where had I not been in the bath I physically couldn’t have seen it otherwise). Such a viserial response seeing that bastard, traumatizing and on my belly ..like seriously am I am this baby not facing enough of a battle??? It’s been so nice being an active wife and mother and I don’t want to lose that.

Usually around my birthday we do some sort of hike, so we did one for our anniversary weekend the following week. We drove a short way to King George and did some exploring.

Other than that on the exercise front I’ve been getting in several dog walks and my prenatal yoga class once a week.

Baby stuff

Up until yesterday everything had been going well. I had been going to the MFM once a month and OB every two weeks. She had been growing great and has been super active. More a fan of somersaults and rolls than kicks but I’ll take it. I found/hired/met with a doula I like. We had our second hospital tour. What a physiological response walking by the NICU, I literally had chills. Maybe an omen?

So the deal with the two hospitals: my Ob office has two locations, one in the town we live in (that hospital has the NICU, slightly older, and under construction, has a tub in L&D, portable fetal monitoring) and the town over (my doctors are on call there, better chance of getting them for delivery, lower key, newer, no NICU). So after some research I had decided on delivering at the further away hospital since having my provider would give me a better chance at having the birth I want and someone familiar to a comfort level of mine with my medical history. This was all until yesterday…

I had a different time feeling driving to the office than I had in recent weeks. I had a new U/S technician or atleast I’ve never seen her before. She had asked how I had been measuring, “only a day or two behind ever” and she informed me that it looked like a couple weeks. You know u/s aren’t going well when there’s a lot of silence during them. I watched after measurement after measurement showed 31, 32, 33 weeks….(I’m 35). The doctor came in and said its her stomach that looks small. She may just be a small baby but now until delivery is crucial so we’ll be monitoring with biophysical ultrasounds weekly to look at growth, breathing, and fluid levels. And just when I started to feel a little confidence. My doula invited me to a birth circle last night but I just couldn’t think birth, baby …back to expect the worst hope for the best. Well atleast I can stop baby shopping??? Here lies the other issue: if this keeps up it means c-section since my OB doesn’t induce patients hoping. To vbac, it means NICU (so hospital number 1), no children allowed under 12…, harsher recovering for a lymie (especially with one wih a new bite). So this will be a very long week….

In like a Lion out like a Lamb March

This month has seen one hospital tour, will see (with the added monitoring and normal OB appts switching to weekly appts at the end of the month) 10 doctor appointments, Easter, new soccer session and spring break. We have a planned visit with friends at the end of the month that I’m really looking forward to. So hopefully spring will bring some blooms of hope. Until next time…

A little over a week ago I had my first Virginia LLMD appointment. Oddly enough we drove a hour and some change to a small, gorgeous rural little town. Situated in essentially a large brick home is Dr. S office. We were created by two therapy dogs (how awesome is that) a small jack Russell and a lab like Chester

As usual leaving a big Lyme appointment my heads spinning a bit but I’ll try to wrap it up nicely as possible. The doctor is a gyno as well so I thought that would be a good fit and I was right; she was. We talked about adding PC liquid (part of the PK protocol) and calbuhtrate. One is for repairing cell membrane, help building baby’s brain, and help the abx not stick to baby’s genes and the other helps detox.:or a combo of them. She also wanted me on Ox bile but seeing I’m a vegetarian we nixed that. We talked about adding some herbs if Bartoella symptoms worsen and maybe Mepron of babesia picks up since my previous herbs aren’t pregnancy safe. I can add back plaquinol if need be since my MFM cleared it. Plans for birth are doing cord blood testing through igenix and she encourage trying for a vbac. I’ll be going to labcorp to retest my thyroid and check vitamin D levels. Hopefully the déjà vu Lyme stuff that’s been popping up will clear (one apnea incident, low heart rate, and one tongue biting incident). My next appointment is in Decemeber but I’m thinking of pushing it back to Janurary so I don’t overwhelm myself during the holidays.

We went to the Marine Corps Marathon over the weekend. I had originally signed up for 10k and even fundraised for fisher house . After the cramping incident post wedding and something similar on a smaller scale after two hour of shopping at Wegmans I decided it was in our best interest for me to forgo the run. Even walking for 6.2 would be two much. I’ll stick to jogging 5k’s when I can. It was still great weekend though: good time with family, my cousin’s first 10k, my aunt PR’d and my husband completed his 10th marathon. I only have a slight cowbell injury.

Yesterday while cleaning up, putting the clean dog bed back together (The pooches got groomed while we were away), the phone finally ran. As I sprinted to it and strained to here while my son was having a meltdown in his room I hear it’s my MFM office. Results are: everything came back low risk and we are having a girl!!! So relived for now but I’m sure I’ll have anxiety for my anatomy scan that is coming up in a couple weeks. Thank you everyone for your prayers and please please keep them up. I know they’ve helped. I had my routine Ob appointment today, baby girl’s heart rate was prefect and nothing new to report. I’ll see them I a month. This decale was on the wall today:

Next up: MFM in two weeks, finding a dentist and lots of little boy school activities. I’m hoping to have a boring rest of the pregnancy. Until next time…

Like this:

Day 1: Bear with me as I lose my mind. This may help the time pass a bit. I started the day with my son’s field trip. That helped put me in a better mood as he had a blast on his first field trip…the only dagger to the heart was after the all of the official activities I sat with his buddy’s (the little boy donned a Red Sox hat next to Ryan’s Pats hat) mom . She turns to me: “is ryan your only one”. *sigh* “yup my one and only”…

Then it was off to the MFM to pick up the kit. Where it was broke to me that it probably will be more like two weeks before I get the results. I could of sworn I read on the site 7-10 Calender days. They said they’re calling either way with results… The lab down the street was empty and the done quickly…tick tock tick tock

I started feeling crummy today. Could be from eating my weight in organic candy corn and chocolate the day before but honestly my biggest Lyme aggrivator has been stress. It sets a flare in motion like nothing else.

I used my home Doppler: perfect heart rate at ~160. I’ve been able to find her heart rate most times since about 9 weeks and it’s always been spot on. How can she not be ok? Doesn’t make sense. Both trisomy 13 and 18 usually have heart issues.

While we especially remember the whole month, yesterday we lit candles for the international wave of light for infant loss and miscarriage awareness day. We remembers our four babies and prayed we wouldn’t add a fifth…

The nights have been the worst,kind of like deployments when you’re sad and scared thinking the worst. Probably didn’t help that I spent atleast an hour on Google comparing our baby’s ultrasound with that babies with confirmed cases of the trisomies. I’ve thought from the beginning the head looked a little small, the facial features a little tiny. I had tried to reassure myself that maybe since we think it’s a girl that is why. But who knows, maybe not. I looked at Ryan’s baby book (that may have set off some water works) and looked at his ultrasound pics….have I mentioned I’m losing my mind?! I’ve stayed up until 1/2 am watching HGTV but for some reason the on demand wasn’t working. Doesn’t direct tv know that it’s crisis time over here?

Starting day 2 of waiting buying some boots. Hey we have seasons now and they were on super sale. Totally justifiable. Time to start our day soon…tick tock tick tock